TFBD Jan-Mar 2010 Series: Class 5 Notes

What a great way to start the year! Well, it's March and look what you've accomplished... hip singles, pelvic locks, chest locks, interior and exterior hip circles, interior and exterior chest circles, undulations up to down, undulations down to up, body wave, shoulder rolls, chest figure 8's, hip figure 8's Front to Back, hip figure 8's Back to Front, hip figure 8's Up to Down, hip figure 8's Down to Up.... and what we covered in the last class:

Hip Twists and 3/4 Shimmies!
(Not necessarily together)

When we talk about hip twists, you can imagine the inside of a washing machine twisting back and forth in time. The muscles used to execute these twists are the obliques. When you twist the right hip forward, it's the left oblique contracting and your right oblique stretching. When you want to add a sharp quality to your hip twist, add a glute contraction. This means, when you twist right with a sharp accent, add a right glute squeeze at the end of that twist. Note that you do not have to make this a BIG movement! With varying degrees of muscle contractions you can start to play with different esthetics of the twists: loose and full, quick and concise, quick and sharp!

Try to keep your legs parallel and knees in the same level. This will help maintain the twists and prevent it from looking like something else.

We also explored other possibilities with the twist: facing front and standing in place, walking step twist, walking twist step, facing diagonal with the front foot on releve. There's no mistake twists are fun!

Finally, we spent a few moments on 3/4 shimmies, as we had been attempting to use shimmies as a warm up in the past few classes. We are finally talking about them. Stepping on the right foot, right hip is up-down-up. Keep that right hip up in order to step on the left foot with left hip up-down-up on the next count. Some people like to think of these as "two hip singles" on each foot evenly distributed for each count. Either way... practice! Experiment with tight shimmies that utilize glute squeezes and also with looseness. Start slow, gradually speed up the tempo. Practice standing on one foot and doing the 3/4 shimmy in place. Hold on to a chair for support. This is a good way to build muscle memory.


I've decided to not post a video clip of this last combination. I'm confident everybody got it!


Thanks for a great first series!
We're almost booked up for the next series. Just two spots left!

See you Thursday!
lily
www.LilyBellydance.com